Entries in clouds
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So not too long ago. I was given the job to create clouds for ORBITOR, or rather research and find the best possible way to make the sexist looking clouds ever. So after much research and other shenanigans I have below some interesting links for all your cloud-aholics out there.

First off! This really simple script helps you make realistic clouds in Maya. Only a few buttons clicks and in no time you will have some pretty sweet looking realistic clouds. I highly recommend to go and check out his other stuff, its really good.

Its all good and all to have a computer to generate the clouds, but the artist needs to understand how clouds work, he/she needs to know them inside and out (Study them). So best advice is either go outside and take lots of reference photos or go online and find someone that has already done all the hard work for you. I wouldn't recommend using Google images as your only main source on the internet for finding reference images. I highly recommend finding published books about clouds. The images in the books are copyrighted to the book, and will generally not turn up in image search engines on the internet. So you could find a few hidden gems in there.

Below are 2 books I purchased earlier this year.

Title:Extraordinary Clouds - Skies of the unexpected from the beautiful to the bizarreRichard Hamblyn This little small book is full of strange bizarre clouds, that is perfect for reference. It also goes in depth about how they were created/formed.

Title:The Book of CloudsJohn A. DayThe printing quality and resolution of the images in this book are not that great as you will expect from a book that is a little bit smaller than an A4 piece of paper. However the giant two page spreads is basically what sold it for me and the little blurbs next to each image giving some information behind the cloud.

Some time in the near future I will post up a tutorial on how to make some sweet looking clouds or have a behind the scenes break down of an already created one.